Murray Rothbard

Murray Rothbard (2 March 1926-7 January 1995) was an American economist of the Austrian School and a key figure in the American libertarian movement.

Biography
Murray Rothbard was born in The Bronx borough of New York City, New York, United States on 2 March 1926, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia. He grew up as a supporter of the "Old Right" among friends and neighbors who were communists or leftists, as his father was an individualist who embraced the American values of minimal government, free enterprise, private property, and "a determination to rise by one's own merits". He graduated from Columbia University in 1945 and became a libertarian, becominc an economics teacher at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1966. He worked there until 1986, when he became a teacher at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Rothbard defended individual rights from government intervention, and, while he was an atheist, he criticized left-libertarianism's hostility towards religion. Rothbard also criticized his former idol Ayn Rand for plagiarizing ideas from Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Herbert Spencer, and for her hostility towards anarchism. He died of a heart attack in 1995 at the age of 68.